Folk Art Mask

Among the millions of items that can be found at an antiques show or a flea market, you wouldn’t expect to see duplicates, but some items are either unforgettable or plentiful. When covering a show, we still try to photograph any possible repro, like the tin Grape Nuts sign with the girl and dog or the many Diamond Dye cabinets with lithographed tin fronts. These are easy; the more recent copies are smaller than the originals, and the pictures are made of little dots indicating a photograph was used. If the price is high, we tell the dealer it is a repro and we almost always get a thank-you and the piece is removed or repriced.  
 
But the “folk art” carved wooden mask of a man with curly hair and puffy cheeks trying to blow out a candle is appealing. Since 2000 when we first saw hundreds of them on a truck at a flea market while we were taping our TV shows, we have seen at least 17, all being sold as antiques. We tried to get a new one at the show for our garden but the dealer’s truck left before we were finished filming. They had sold out. The next month at another major flea market, there was the truck and hundreds more of the masks. We bought one at lunch time for about $25, and it is now hanging on a fence in our garden, looking very old. The green marble eyes have fallen out and we only found one to glue back in place. The wood, a very soft wood from the Philippines where the masks were made, has slowly decayed and we sprayed it with white paint that has also worn off. He is now joined on the fence by a car grill, the back of a metal chair that had fallen off, a street sign that fell down in an accident at our corner, a flat metal rooster from an old weathervane and several rectangular pieces of ironwork, probably parts of a gate or a radiator cover. The folk art mask is the least expensive decoration and the one that gets the most comments. But I must warn you that the last time I saw another one, it was sold in an auction for $400 and described as an “early sculpture made of a wood-like material with realistic glass eyes.” My favorite fake has charmed and fooled another collector. You might find one since thousands were made. But if you do, see if you can convince the seller that it is really only 20 years old.

Reproduction wooden folk art mask in Terry Kovel’s garden